The present invention relates to a magnetic tape recording and/or reproducing apparatus, and more specifically to a compact helical scan video tape recording and/or reproducing apparatus.
Recent advances in electronics technologies have made possible the high density packaging of components in cassette video tape recorders with the accompanying advantageous reduction in size and weight. This is particularly beneficial to camera-mounted video tape recorders. According to a current standard for camera-mounted video tape recorders, the diameter of the rotary cylinder is 2/3 of the diameter of the cylinder employed in the standard non-portable video tape recorder and the tape is wound over an arc of 285 degrees on the circumference of the rotary cylinder much greater than the 190-degree winding of the non-portable standard. In addition, four magnetic transducer heads are mounted on the circumference of the cylinder with 90-degree angular spacing in contrast with the two-head cylinder of the non-portable standard.
It is a natural desire to provide a still compact video tape recorder by the use of the four-head, small diameter rotary cylinder with an 8-mm video recording format which is another standard for compact, camera-mounted video tape recorders.